If you have a copy of the Word of God, I invite you to turn with me to the book of James, chapter 4. And as you're turning there, for those of you who didn't get a chance to check your emails or maybe you're not on the church email list, I sent an email out to the congregation yesterday announcing that I am leaving this church. And my departure day, my last Lord's Day here with the fellowship is going to be June 23rd. Now I wanna make sure everyone's on the same page with that. I had more than one or two people come to me and say, I can't believe this is your last Lord's Day and you only gave us one day of notice. No, I'm giving y'all a whole month, so do not worry, don't freak out. I'm not gonna close this sermon and be like Bilbo Baggins putting on Invisible Ring and just book it. That's not my plan. I'm gonna be four hours away, Paris, Tennessee. The name of the church I'm gonna be going to is Christ Fellowship Particular Baptist Chapel. Big words, long church name, great people. And I'm really excited to go there, and the reason I'm departing is, Lord willing, they're gonna observe me, I'm gonna live among them, and Lord willing, maybe in a few months, become a pastor there. So that's why I'm leaving, that's what I've been hoping for ever since I came here. I've been here seven years, came here in 2017. And there's a lot of ways in which I feel like it's been much longer. There's a lot of ways in which it's like, I'm leaving, I feel like I just got here. As the time's drawing near, I'm finding out that it's becoming more and more difficult than I anticipated. My heart is here in a lot of ways. And not only do I love everyone here, and I'm gonna miss everyone here, and all my friends are, Well, most of my friends, besides maybe the ones at Ligonier right now. Everybody's in the room right now. So it's gonna be hard. But there's also a spiritual dimension for why this is hard. I think there's a sense in which I'm experiencing a form of spiritual warfare. I'm hearing a lot of accusing thoughts from the devil. Lies like, you're not good enough, you won't be happy there. Some are completely irrational and illogical. RBC's gonna fall apart without you. Yeah, like I'm a pastor. So, as I'm praying over these things, I ask that you would pray for me as well. And as I've been thinking about these things, it's led me to today's text. And in verse 7, particularly, what it brought me to was, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Now, if we were to examine the context of this chapter, James is not addressing the same circumstances that I'm going through. Specifically, he's addressing wars and fighting among the church members. And the reason that he gives for these wars among church members is because of worldliness. James does not point out their sin in order to give them a word of condemnation. He doesn't say, look, y'all are fighting among each other, y'all are giving into your lusts, and so you're killing one another. He doesn't say, therefore, you're going to hell. But he gives a word of gospel encouragement. If you draw nigh to God, God will draw nigh unto you. So that's what drew me to today's text. I'm going to preach this text in its context for the purpose that it was given. And I also think it goes along pretty well with some of the sermons RBC's been covering lately. Jim's been preaching a couple of messages on bearing one another's burdens. And in our preaching club a week or two ago, our brother Kevin preached on bearing one another. So this too can have a relevant application for how do we bear with one another and bear each other's burdens when it's hard to love one another. So I'm gonna try to keep this immensely practical. Not pragmatic, but practical. We are a family, and just like earthly families, the children of God are going to fight with one another. But our goal is to lay down these fights at the feet of Jesus and let brotherly love continue. So our verses today are verses seven through 10, but I'm gonna begin reading at verse one. From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts, that war in your members? Ye lust and have not. Ye kill and desire to have, and cannot obtain. Ye fight and war, and yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Do you think that the scripture saith in vain, the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. And now for today's text. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. Well, amen. Let's go to this Lord in time of prayer. Our gracious heavenly Father, Lord, we ask that you would bless the reading and the proclamation of your holy word. Lord, we ask that you would convict us of sin, that you would show us the error of our ways, but Lord, more importantly, we ask that you would lift us up. We ask that you would humble us in your sight and that we would draw an eye unto you. Lord, when we examine the wickedness of our sin, let us not be cast down, let us not sorrow in these things, but let us come to Christ. Let us come to the Savior of these sins, and let us rejoice in the day of our salvation. Lord, we ask that your word would not afflict those who are so easily afflicted and burdened down by these things, but Lord, let today be a message of comfort, help us to find our rest and our peace in the finished work of Jesus Christ. His blood is all that we claim. So help us to love you and to grow in our knowledge of these scriptures. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So today, I want to just talk about some practical exhortations for what it means to, as our church covenant says, promote the peace and unity of the church. This is a covenant responsibility. If you've joined the fellowship of this church, those are not empty words. That is a value made with God as your witness that I am going to do what I can to promote peace and unity to the best of my ability. Therefore, if there's ever a time where we are fighting with our brother, there's unspoken tension, an unresolved conflict, it becomes then our duty not to just ignore these things, not to just hope they go away, but to actively seek reconciliation. Disunity and division are threats to this congregation. And my chief evidence for this is that it's been a threat to other 1689 churches. We are not the only Reformed Baptist church that's had to deal with these kind of problems. And if we look at other churches, there have been churches that have disintegrated. There have been entire church splits. Associations have collapsed because people fight with one another, because there are arguments that go on that remain unresolved. And what history has shown us, even the small little segment of church history that's Reformed Baptist church history, It has shown us that we cannot hide behind our theology. Practical experiential godliness is the glue that must hold us together. Now the foundation for this godliness is of course, it is our theology, it's the faith that's once for all delivered to the saints. It's the belief that is the blood of Jesus who unites us together. And therefore in many ways we must be the hands and feet of Jesus for one another. And I think church history in a lot of ways attests to the same fact, that it is not primarily our clear articulation of precise doctrine that has held the church, but it's been love. God has upheld his church throughout the ages through Christian love, not through explicit clarity of doctrine. The 1689 is fantastic. That didn't come about. until the year 1677. I'm just trying to lead you on. But the fact of the matter is, that's not even 400 years old. Even if you want to go back a little bit further, when did the Reformation begin? 1516, 1517, right around there. It has not been a clear and explicit articulation, even of justification by faith alone, that had preserved the church in all ages. It has been the hand of God. that has caused his people to rest simply in a simple faith that Jesus Christ died according to the scriptures and that he rose according to the scriptures and whoever believes on him will be saved. and works naturally go together. I mean, when we consider the Reformation as the Catholic Church was progressing through the Middle Ages and we came to the time of the Reformation, it wasn't just that the Pope had gotten all of his power, it wasn't just that they were trusting in the sacraments, it wasn't just that they had completely neglected believer's baptism by immersion, but there was also a lot of corruption. Priests were literally selling salvation. We'll get your loved one out of purgatory if you give us money, because we have a cathedral we need to build. Priests were doing all sorts of debased sexual acts. What about clerical celibacy? It wasn't just bad doctrine, but it was also bad practice, and the two went together. Therefore, We have fantastic doctrine at this church. We also must strive that we must be consistent with that doctrine and have great godliness and fellowship and Christian love here as well. So, with all this, the main thrust of today's sermon is that the health of our fellowship is going to be contingent upon whether or not you will draw nigh unto God. So I wanna talk about this under three headings. First of all, repentance. Secondly, a reordering of affections. And thirdly, godly humility. So, repentance. Our text begins by saying, submit yourselves therefore to God. And what they're saying here is, first and foremost, focus on your own holiness. Our immediate thought is not, you know, is my brother doing righteously, or is the congregation as a whole healthy, but how is your personal relationship with God? Are you seeking him in season and out of season? Do you commune with him in prayer? Do you seek his face? Or is the Lord's day the only day that you're a servant of the Lord? It cannot just be a Sunday thing, but we must seek him in all that we do. The word submission means to a point below. And so when it talks about submitting to God, we need to recognize that God is the first and supreme being. He is Lord of lords and King of kings. And by placing ourselves under God, we are recognizing that there is an infinite distinction between the creator and the creature. You are not God. You depend on God. And everything you do in this life has to be done keeping that in mind. God is God. He is God over us. We submit to him and we seek to do all that we can to honor him and to serve him. Our first consideration is not the holiness. of our brother. It's not first and foremost how has he sinned against me or what are ways that he can be reconciled towards me. Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter seven, why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye but do not consider the plank in your own eye? We are not God. James later tells us in this chapter, that we ought not to speak evil of one another. And in verse 12, it says, there is one lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another? And what it's getting at here is when you judge another, you are playing God. Are you God? No, you are not. You submit to God. God does not submit to you. Your brother does not submit to you. you mutually submit to God. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. And our text tells us, cleanse your hearts, cleanse your hands and purify your hearts. Now the question is, That's part of our responsibility. Yes, we need to make sure that our deeds are righteous and that our hearts are in the right place, that we do everything in relation to God. Not for our own glory, but simply for God's glory. But we do not do this in our own power. When we draw nigh to God, it's not simply us drawing nigh to God, but it's the Holy Spirit working within us to draw us to God. If you are given the Spirit of Christ, if you've been born again, the number one priority of the Holy Spirit is to point you to Christ. It is God who draws us to God as we fellowship with God. Everybody here needs the gospel. And the gospel is not, you need to do more things to get closer to God, that God can love you more. But it is that God comes to seek and to save him who is lost. And if there's anybody here who does not know this cleansing power, if there's anybody here who does not have a pure heart, the answer is not, well, be better, try harder, submit, The answer is humble yourself before God and he will draw an eye unto you. Come to Jesus, believe on him. If not, you know, the next clause in this speaks about resisting the devil and he will flee from you. This is not a throwaway comment. You're either under, you're either in the kingdom of God or you are under the dominion of Satan. you must resist the devil or he will flee from you. This isn't a throwaway comment. In the midst of all this, he's talking about wars within the church, quarrels among brothers, things that are not healthy in a congregation, and then he says, and resist the devil and he will flee from you. It might seem to us almost like that's out of place, I think what I would maybe say to that is it might seem out of place because we don't take the devil very seriously. And we might say to ourselves, well, I've got so much sin within my own heart that that's a sufficient explanation for the sin all around me. Well, you know, that might be true to a certain extent, but the fact of the matter is the Bible tells us all over the place that there is a devil who's prowling about seeking to kill and to destroy and to lead you into temptation. And Jesus was not wasting his words in the Lord's prayer when he said, deliver us from the evil one. The devil is the father of lies. He hates us. He hates Christianity. He hates Jesus. He hates Christians. He hates this congregation. He hates our confession of faith. Anything good that we have going on in this congregation, whether that's lifting one another up, or maybe it's our outside ministries, or maybe it's the faithful week-to-week preaching of the Word of God, he hates all these things, and he wants to make it his goal to undermine these things. And we have nowhere to hide from the devil except in the arms of God. There was an interesting book that I had read earlier this year called Wonders of the Invisible World, and it was by a minister named Cotton Mather, And Cotton Mather lived in the 1600s, and he was a minister in Boston, Massachusetts. He was also the president of Harvard College before it went a little bit crazy. But it used to be an orthodox Christian institution, trained godly ministers, and it was wonderful. And Cotton Mather looked out on Puritan Massachusetts and said, Reformation theology is abounding. We have this wonderful college that's fantastic. It's training up godly ministers. He looks out over the land. People aren't given to drunkenness. People aren't being vile and rebellious and all these things. My society right now appears to me to be the most godly nation in the history of the world. And there's a sense in which he might have been right. And he concludes by saying, therefore, it's no accident of history that the Salem witch trials are going on right now. That was his conclusion. Whatever you believe about the Salem witch trials, the fact is, he recognized that in the midst of godliness, Satan is going to have something going on. We need to recognize that. Not everything is good all the time. We are in a spiritual war. And we need to put on the armor of God. We need to not forget that we are in a war, not just with ourselves, not just with the center of the world, but with spiritual forces that are beyond our understanding. The book of Galatians tells us, Yeah, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. That sounds like the devil to me. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. And having done all, Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace, and above all, taking the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication. for all the saints. We must resist the devil. We must remember that he's among us. We need to pray for his downfall, for his destruction. And sometimes, even during a sermon, why did I get distracted during that point of the sermon? Why am I struggling when it's time for me to pray during my daily devotions. Why am I having a problem with this, this, this that appears to be irrational? I'm not saying that it's the devil, but I am saying it's a real possibility. There are things that he does, and even if you don't know, you know, what's exactly me? What's exactly the devil? Keep on guard either way. Our text next calls us to walk righteously. It says, cleanse your hands and purify your hearts. Now, this is talking about not just a mere acknowledgment that you're a sinner, and this isn't even a general sorrow over your sins. But when James tells us, cleanse your hands and purify your hearts, and he calls us sinners, he's being very clear here. He's simply saying, stop sinning. We don't dance around it. We don't pray, God, help me to stop sinning in this way. It's stop. It's not think about it more, try to develop a Christian worldview to think about these things better. It's as simple as stop. And so many times we want to get around the clear commands of scripture and come up with, almost in the name of godliness, we want to get around sin. But we need to stop. We simply need to end our hypocrisy in these areas. It says also that we are not just sinners, but we are double-minded. We're double-minded because we often give so much grace to ourselves, but we give so little to others. Now, oftentimes, we might have different struggles from other people. And we know this. People don't sin the same way that I do. If they do sin the same way that I do, completely understandable brother, no harm, no foul. But if you sin in a way that's not hard for me, it's easy for me not to sin that way, I'm gonna judge you pretty hard. I think that's in all of our hearts. Just because there's different struggles among brethren and a different ease in which we deal with these problems, that does not therefore mean that we give them a different level of grace. What if God was like that to us? What if God said, well, because I don't struggle with anything, because I am God Almighty, I am perfect. Therefore, when I tell you to be perfect and you don't, what if he gave us no grace? He would not be God. That would be ungodly. We need to be gracious not just when it's easy to be gracious, not just when we want to be gracious, but we need to be gracious even unto the end of denying our self-righteousness. We need to never forget that God asks us to walk righteously, to cleanse our hands, to purify our hearts, and to stop sinning. Secondly, Our text calls us to a reordering of affections, and we find this in verse nine. Our text reads, be afflicted and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness. So there's a call here not just to think differently about the things of the gospel and about our sin, not just to think differently and to act differently, but there's also a call here specifically to emote differently, have different emotional affections. I think as Reformed people especially, our emotional constitution is often neglected, as if it's not part of our Christian duty, and this ought not to be so. When the Bible tells us to love one another, this is not just a reference to duty. This is not just saying, hey, have a goodwill towards all men. It does mean those things, but it also means to express a joy to one another, a joy in one another. It ought to be that when I see you, I don't just see you, but I see Christ in you, and that gives me great joy. That ought to be how we fellowship as a congregation. The fact of the matter is, not only do we have some messed up emotions sometimes, but we very much have a seared conscious, especially compared to past generations. When we look at the way that past generations do things, especially the different moral scruples that they had, We often think of people living 100 years ago or 200 years ago as, they were prudes, they were puritanical, they had their own things going on, they were legalists. That should not be our default disposition towards them. And I would even argue that that has a real potential to be a fifth commandment violation. We're to honor our mother and father, and that's not just respect to our earthly father and mother, but also to previous generations of Christians. Our immediate gut reaction should not be to be dismissive of their wisdom, but to say, hey, I've grown up in a world that is entrenched in a greater degree of sin than they were. Maybe I'm missing something. How many of us here would laugh at a dirty joke or would laugh at dark humor? You know what I mean by dark humor? Dark humor is when you joke about death or dying or things that should be like, That's disturbing, that's awful, that belongs in a horror movie and not from a pulpit. But how many of us sometimes laugh at those kind of jokes? You know it's wrong, and you may even never crack a joke like that yourself, but you still laugh. You still find it humorous, and in a twisted way, you find those kind of jokes joyful. Let the fact that you laugh at these kind of things be evidence for itself. Your emotions are sick, and they need to be redeemed. Jesus, thankfully, assumed our total humanity. He came to earth and assumed a human nature and took upon himself like passions, not sinful passions, but he had an emotional constitution. And he brought his emotional humanity to the cross. He died for these things, and therefore when you come to him, Jesus will forgive you of these things. He will forgive you of your failure to love. He will forgive you of your failure to rejoice in that which is good, and he will forgive you for rejoicing in that which is evil. The Spirit of Christ who lives within you, he desires to sanctify your emotions. So, given this, Our emotions need to be sanctified. Let's apply this principle to the context of today's verses, fights within the church. Consider our default affections. When there are fights, usually when there's a fight between brothers or a fight between a brother and a sister, we often focus on the circumstance or the matter of the disagreement. Now there's a place for this, you know, if we're disagreeing on whether or not Jesus rose from the dead, or whether Jesus is eternally God, or whether justification is by faith alone, those are things you should really debate, really work out, and you are saving somebody's soul for doing that. But, oftentimes, we're not fighting over something like that. We're fighting over personality issues, or something more practical than that. James, in discussing these wars among church members, he does not point to the circumstances of the thing that they're arguing over, but he points that the reason that they're fighting is because of their sinful hearts. James 4.1, from whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence even of your lusts that war in your members? He says the reason is because of your lusts, because of your sinful desires. Now, so often when we sin, we often want to give our sin this air of nobility to it, as if, yeah, I do fight with people, but I've got a pretty good reason for doing that. You know, as if, yeah, these texts might apply to other people, but they don't apply to me. And we might justify the secret beefs that we have with people in the name of moral integrity. They posted something combative on Facebook, so I'm justified in being upset with them. Or, they cut me off last time I tried to talk to them at church, so I'm justified in giving them the cold shoulder now. Or, you know, they promote a spirit of immaturity or unkindness or, you know, they bring me down when I'm around them. And I can't have that affecting my own walk with Christ. The Christian response to all these things is not to dwell on these things. It's not to create division in the body, but it's to forgive it. To forgive it, to love your brother, and to carry on. And I think in many ways we all kind of know this. This isn't rocket science, this isn't difficult doctrine that I need to dwell on and explain. But as Ephesians 4.26 reminds us, let not the sun go down upon your wrath. We keep short accounts with God, we must keep short accounts with one another. Life is short. Life is too short to have fights and unreconciliation between our brothers. We must do all that we can to promote a spirit of peace and unity. Like I said, we know this. Why then is this not the case? We know the right thing, and we refuse to do it. I submit to you the reason that we refuse to do this, the reason that sometimes there are fights in this church, and if you're a guest here and you're like, is Luke preaching this because there's a thousand fights in this church? That's not what I'm getting at. I am not aware. But the fact of the matter is, we are a church. Therefore, I know that there's fighting. You can't escape that reality. Sometimes Christians fight with each other for one simple reason, and it's because we enjoy the fight. That's it. Sometimes we sin because we like to sin. It's as simple as that. In the Confessions, Augustine gives this story of how when he was a child, he used to steal pears from the market, the fruit pears, and he would comment a little bit on why he would steal them. He said, it wasn't because my family was poor. It wasn't because I was hungry. It wasn't because my friend dared me to. Because I wanted to. Because stealing was fun. And I rejoiced in sin, and that's all there was to it. And I think a lot of times for us, it's the same thing. We don't want to say that. We definitely don't want to say that out loud. But I think that's exactly what it is. Fights and beefs with other people, it feeds our pride. It's a source of ungodly entertainment for many of us. And this is why gossip is so juicy. We love to hear about the failures of others. And I think for some of us here, Your consciences are so entrenched in the sin of gossip that you are not even pricked by the fact that you have been tallying other people's faults. Our text demands this, that you would not joke about the beefs that you have with people, that you wouldn't find it fun or entertaining or, you know, a little bit of drama to spice up your church life. But our text tells us this. Be afflicted and mourn. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and let your joy be turned to heaviness. May you find your sin repulsive and disturbing. Your brother's sin as well, but especially yours. Anything short of a holy peace among the brethren should trouble you. And this is the repentance that James calls us to. It's not a small thing. It's not a light thing. It's a sin that God hates. Which brings us to, now, what should our correct affections be? Having been way aware of sin and having now consulted the word of God as to how exactly to walk in the spirit of repentance, let's consider the difficulty of the task. You know, in many ways, as Christians, we can force well-doing. We can force ourselves to behave. If we say something we regret or something we're about to regret, we can shut our mouths. Or, you know, if there is a fight between our brother, we can force a reconciliation. We can force, you know, one of these difficult conversations where it's like, brother, I know things aren't good between us, but we need to get We need to move on, we need to have things not be tense and awkward, we need to say we're brothers again. There's a way we can fake these external things as a Christian. However, it does seem like it's an almost impossible task for me to ask you, just change your emotions. It's easy to fake the Christian life externally, and many fights within a church body can be fixed by superficial means. Just put a Band-Aid on it. But change to affections, a newfound love for your brother, that's not something you can fake. That's just something that's just between you and God. It's something that is often beyond our control. Our text tells us, draw nigh to God. and he will draw nigh to you. You must come to God. You must draw near to him. You must approach the throne of grace if you are to receive grace. You want changed emotions? You want love for your brother? Come to God. Say, God, give me a heart that loves the things that you love. And give me a heart that hates the things that you hate. So the best piece of advice I have in terms of application here would be to pray. Jesus tells us to love your enemy and to pray for those who persecute you. Now, Lord willing, I hope that there's nobody in this congregation who you're thinking of that's, yeah, I'd say this person's my enemy and they persecute me. Lord willing, that's not the case. But when Jesus says something so extreme, pray and love your enemy, how much more so should that be true for somebody who's not your enemy? for someone who's been bought with the blood of Jesus, for someone that in the sight of God is elect, beloved, holy, righteous, and redeemed. Shouldn't you see them the same way God does? That should be the way that we treat our fellow brother. Pray often and pray long. there's anybody you're quarreling with, pray for them by name, not just in passing, not just say, also for brother Luke that we'd be friends again, but pray for the person, say, Lord, I desire this person's sanctification. Lord, I know that they're struggling with their job, and I ask, Lord, that you would bless them in that respect. Lord, I ask that you would convert their unconverted family members. Lord, I ask that you would do this, that, and the other. And you will find that when you start praying for somebody, you will start loving that person. It's impossible not to. How can you call upon the God of heaven and bring them to him and intercede for them and simultaneously say, I still don't love them? That will change. That is one of those means of grace that God uses you, that God uses to change your heart. This is one of the great things about prayer meeting. You know, we often pray for individuals by name, but we often pray for the congregation in general. If you are suffering from a general love in your heart for this congregation generally considered, come to prayer meeting. If you come week after week and get into the habit of praying for the Reformed Baptist Church of Louisville, your heart will be warmed. You will grow to love this people. You know, I can speak from personal experience for them. I love these people. I look forward to prayer meeting every single Wednesday. When I'm not here, I'm texting someone, what'd they say? What's going on? Because we love one another, and I think we've grown through our prayer meeting. So that's my plug for prayer meeting. So thirdly, how then should we pray? Our text tells us in verse 10, the answer is humility. Humble yourself. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up. You need humility before God. We need to recognize, you need to recognize, I need to recognize that we are unworthy of the grace that we've been shown. What have we earned in this life? The only thing we've really done is we've sinned. We haven't loved God as we ought. We haven't loved our brother as we ought. We deserve hell. And God has not only not given us hell, but he has promised us heaven. He's given us his son, Jesus Christ. We were vile. In many ways, we still are vile. Wretched. And God said, therefore, I'll give you mercy. I love you. That is what God does. We need to humble ourselves before God. We need to say, Lord, thank you for saving me, but Lord, I need today more of that cleansing power. I can do nothing of myself, and all that I have is all of grace. Help me to see myself all right. Help me to see my brother all right. Help me to think of others better than myself. Lord, bring me low that I might be lifted up. Lord, I do believe you, but I need you to help my unbelief. Make me a better Christian. Make me a better servant. Lord, help me to walk righteously and do simply whatever your will is. Humility also brings us a little bit back towards the beginning about what I was saying about the devil and resisting him and things like that. And the devil has all sorts of devices and machinations to use against you. If you wanna hide behind your theological intelligence, well, God's gonna puff you up, or the devil, sorry, the devil's gonna puff you up with that knowledge. Maybe you take some level of pride in the fact that you have a servant's heart and you love doing things for the church. Well, the devil might plant in you this idea that the church needs me, and why aren't other people as committed as I am? Or maybe you have perfect church attendance, even on Wednesdays. Why don't other people prioritize the Lord like I do? Well, the fact of the matter is, the devil puts these thoughts in our head a lot of times. Again, not every time. So much sin comes from our own heart, But there is one thing I believe that we can do to frustrate the devil, and that is humility. The way to thwart him, a great tool of repentance to stop him in his tracks is to put on humility. Because when we say to God, Lord, I am content with but little. I don't care what my circumstances are, I don't care what my trials are, I don't care what blessings or whatever I have in my path, Lord, with whatever situation I am, I simply want to be faithful. That's it, I don't need all this renown, I don't need money, I don't need power, I don't need a huge family or whatever it is, but Lord, whatever stage I'm in, I'll simply be faithful. Well, a commitment to faithfulness in all trials and circumstances, that's going to frustrate the devil. Because how's he gonna tempt you with that? He's gonna use your humbleness against you, We need to live our entire life before the face of God. If we resist the devil with humility, then he will flee from you. Because in humility, the very opposite of pride, we draw nigh to God. Now paradoxically, we must bring ourselves to a point where we can say, Lord, I am content with mere crumbs from the master's table. And when we are humbled in such a way, God promises that he will lift you up. And that's not just a statement. In the gospel, we are promised not just crumbs from the master's table, but you are invited to the great wedding feast of the lamb. You are given every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus and nothing is withheld from you. Only lay down your pride and come to Christ. Now, the call today was not to beat anybody down, to say, you're a sinner, I know it, and you should feel bad, and everybody should feel bad. That's not the point. There's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. The point is to expose your sin that you might be humble, that you might come to Christ, that you might submit yourselves under the shadow of the cross. Because you only have one life. There's one life, and you only have, I mean, if you're a member here, you only have one church. We need to love one another. We need to live the life that God has designed for us to live. You need to experience church fellowship the way that God wants you to. And I guess I'll end by saying this. I'm going to miss you all when I move to Paris. Paris, Tennessee, not France. I'm going to be saying that the rest of my life, Lord willing. I'm going to miss you all when I move to Paris. But I'm not going to say goodbye, because if I say goodbye, I'm not going to mean it. It's not goodbye. For the Christian, it's never goodbye, but it's always a holy see you later. Because I'm not saying goodbye. I mean, on the one hand, yeah, I'll be here to visit. But there's another sense in which I will see you in glory. And I want you to be able to say when we get there that over these past seven years that our fellowship together served in some small way in God's plan to get you there. I know I can say that about you. You have helped me to draw an eye to God. You have been that instrument, the fellowship of God. The way you have done that is by loving me, by not doing these things, by not being hateful and warring and quarrelsome, but by repenting. And so, You've helped me draw nigh unto God, and so I just want to leave you with that final message as well. If you draw nigh unto God, he will draw nigh unto you. He loves you, and he loves you dearly. So let's go to this God in prayer. Our Heavenly Father. Lord, I thank you for how good you've been to this church. Lord, I thank you that we are united by nothing other than the blood of your son, Jesus Christ. Lord, we thank you that he has purchased a perfect salvation for us, that there is nothing we can do to draw us away from your loving face. Yet, Lord, we ask that we would experience more of you. Lord, that we would sense a greater sense of your presence. Lord, help us to draw closer to you. Help us to know that we are loved by you to a greater extent. Lord, we ask that as we leave church this evening, Lord, that we would keep our eyes on the gospel of grace. Lord, let us not forget that you are the author and the perfecter of our salvation. Lord, help brotherly love to continue and help us to draw nigh unto you. We thank you for drawing nigh unto us. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.